Author(s): Alex Johnson & James Oses

Literature

Rooms of Their Own travels around the world, examining the unique spaces in which famous writers created their most notable work. The perennial question asked of all authors is How do you write? What do they require of their room or desk? Do they have favourite pens, paper or typewriters? And have they found the perfect daily routine to channel their creativity?

Crossing centuries, continents and genres, Alex Johnson has pooled 50 of the best writers and transports you to the heart of their writing rooms - from attics and studies to billiard rooms and bathtubs. Discover the ins and outs of how each great writer penned their famous texts, and the routines and habits they perfected. Meet authors who rely on silence and seclusion and others who need people, music and whisky. Meet those who travel half-way across the world to a luxury writing retreat, and others who just need an empty shed at the bottom of the garden. Some are particular about pencils, inks, paper and typewriters, and others will scribble on anything - including the furniture. But whether they write in the library or in cars, under trees, private islands, hotel rooms or towers - each of these stories confirms that there is no best way to write. From James Baldwin, writing in the small hours of the morning in his Paris apartment, to DH Lawrence writing at the foot of a towering Ponderosa pine tree, to the Brontë sisters managing in a crowded co-working space, this book takes us into the lives of some of history's greatest ever writers, with each writing space illustrated in evocative watercolour.

In looking at the working lives of our favourite authors, bibliophiles will be transported to other worlds, aspiring writers will find inspiration and literature fans will gain deeper insight into their most-loved authors.

Contents:

Introduction, Isabel Allende, Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, W.H. Auden, Jane Austen, James Baldwin, Honore de Balzac, Ray Bradbury, The Brontes, Anton Chekhov, Agatha Christie, Colette, Roald Dahl, Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ian Fleming, Thomas Hardy, Ernest Hemingway, Victor Hugo, Samuel Johnson, Judith Kerr, Stephen King, Rudyard Kipling, D.H. Lawrence, Astrid Lindgren, Jack London, Hilary Mantel, Margaret Mitchel,l Michel de Montaigne, Haruki Murakami, George Orwell, Sylvia Plath, Beatrix Potter, Marcel Proust, J.K. Rowling, Vita Sackville-West, George Bernard Shaw, Zadie Smith, Danielle Steel, Gertrude Stein, John Steinbeck, Dylan Thomas, Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Edith Wharton, E.B. White, P.G. Wodehouse, Virginia Woolf, William Wordsworth, Index, Visit the Rooms Acknowledgements.

Author Biography: Alex Johnson is a journalist, blogger and the author of A Book of Book Lists, Improbable Libraries, Bookshelf, and Shedworking: The Alternative Workplace Revolution. He runs the web sites Shedworking at www.shedworking.co.uk and Bookshelf at www.onthebookshelf.co.uk. Alex lives in St Albans, London with his wife, three children, and plenty of books from all over the world.